UN-Water Plan to Implement UN Strategy for Water & Sanitation

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

The Implementation Plan builds on the contributions UN-Water members and partners provided through consultations, inputs into Priority Collaborative Actions and Contributing Actions, and ongoing collaboration.

Covering the period 2025-2028, it identifies shared priorities and actions to strengthen coordination, align agency workplans, and deliver more coherent and effective support to Member States.

UN-Water has launched an implementation plan for the UN System-wide Strategy on Water and Sanitation. The Collaborative Implementation Plan (CIP) outlines a practical roadmap for UN entities and partners to work together to support countries in accelerating progress on SDG 6 (clean water and sanitation).

The Plan was launched at UN Headquarters in New York, US, on 9 July 2025, a year after the launch of the first-ever UN System-wide Strategy for Water and Sanitation, which aims to enhance UN system-wide coordination and delivery of water and sanitation priorities. The Strategy seeks to fully operationalize inter-agency coordination and to leverage UN development system reforms and upscaled water and sanitation action to provide more strategic, effective, coherent, and efficient support to Member States.

The Implementation Plan builds on the contributions UN-Water members and partners provided through consultations, inputs into Priority Collaborative Actions and Contributing Actions, and ongoing collaboration. Covering the period 2025-2028, it identifies shared priorities and actions to strengthen coordination, align agency workplans, and deliver more coherent and effective support to Member States.

The Plan supports the implementation of the Strategy by, inter alia:

• Identifying time-bound actions towards achieving Strategy outputs and outcomes;
• Highlighting contributions by UN entities and partners to enhance synergies, address gaps, and reduce duplication;
• Providing a basis for aligning agency strategies and programming on water and sanitation;
• Serving as a joint framework for monitoring progress; and
• Helping mobilize additional funding to implement the Strategy collectively.

Among priority collaborative actions, the Plan calls for the UN system and its partners to work together to: unify and amplify UN voices on water and sanitation; chart the UN’s long-term role in water and sanitation beyond 2030; collaborate for joint country programming; mainstream water and sanitation within the Rio Conventions at all levels; improve the availability and use of evidence and learning to accelerate progress; and mobilize to elevate the ambition of UN Water Conferences.

Contributing actions identified in the Plan reflect the wide variety of work on water and sanitation. They include more than 150 actions mapped across the individual mandates and workstreams of UN-Water members and partners, promoting accountability and application of a human rights-based lens to water and sanitation.

Also on 9 July, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) adopted six themes for the UN 2026 Water Conference: water for people; water for prosperity; water for planet; water for cooperation; water in multilateral processes; and investments for water.

The UN 2026 Water Conference will convene in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) from 2-4 December 2026.

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UN-Water Launches Plan to Implement UN Strategy for Water and Sanitation – SDG Knowledge Hub

Direct Link to Full 80-PAGE 2025 Publication: cip_chapeau_document_2025_web.pdf